Connect with multiple back-end business systems (such as sales, marketing, and customer relations) to make targeted suggestions to customers and workers.

Answer complex questions such as, “Where is the coffee shop closest to the convention center that is open until 8 p.m.

Remind an employee to submit an expense report and help them do so.

Automate responses for the most common IT service desk questions including informational and transactional requests.

For example, the latest digital assistants can: The services provided vary depending on the types and quality of the digital assistant’s natural language capabilities, AI, and other technologies used-the more advanced the digital assistant, the more business functions it can perform. With an intelligent chatbot, common tasks, such as resetting passwords, system status updates, outage alerts, ordering supplies, and knowledge management can be easily automated and made available around the clock. They’re also used for internal purposes, such as to onboard new employees.įor IT operations, chatbots are frequently used to enhance the service management experience by automating employee services and making them accessible to more people. Digital assistants are most commonly used in customer contact centers to manage incoming communications. If you are going to be out of town for a few days, your digital assistant can tell you the weather forecast at home and turn down the heat while you are away.įor businesses, digital assistants provide a single, convenient point of contact for contractors and customers. Get the directions you need while avoiding congested traffic, pick up that coffee you ordered, and check in to your hotel-all with the help of your digital assistant.

In this way, working with a digital assistant becomes a personalized experience tailored to your needs.įor consumers, digital assistants like Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana are able to answer many general questions and offer recommendations based on a user’s profile, past behavior, and other information. They can use their understanding of you to make predictions of your behavior and make recommendations based on your history and preferences. These digital assistants use AI and machine learning to understand and learn your preferences based on your past actions. The more advanced digital assistants are capable of processing multiple tasks and complex questions to converse with you in a way that is easy to understand. Advanced NLU can understand complex sentences and separate the various pieces within a multipart request or question and return an accurate answer. Advanced natural language understanding (NLU) gives it the ability to parse what you say or type and then generate accurate answers. Advanced natural language processing gives it the ability to process what you are saying or typing. A digital assistant pulls data from multiple sources and puts it into context. Not all digital assistants have the same abilities. Perhaps an easy way to understand the difference is to remember that while all digital assistants are chatbots, not all chatbots are digital assistants. A digital assistant, for example, can respond to a complex request such as, “Schedule a flight to Phoenix for me next Sunday using my usual seating preferences, and arrange transportation to and from the airport.” To respond to this request, the digital assistant will need to access multiple sources-a capacity that the ordinary chatbot does not possess. It’s easy to confuse digital assistants with chatbots-and, in fact, a digital assistant is an advanced type of chatbot that can handle more complex interactions in a conversational way.

These are relatively simple “conversations.” You can also request a ride from a ridesharing service by using one of the service’s chatbots. If you speak into your phone to order your favorite coffee drink, you are interacting with a chatbot. What’s the Difference Between a Digital Assistant and a Chatbot?Ĭhatbots are computer programs that simulate and process written or spoken human conversation so that people can interact with digital devices as if they were communicating with a real person.

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